Topic: FTP to use Home/Samba share and PDc services

[Pete]

I have only just discovered Esmith while looking to replace a 5 server win2k AD domain that provides AD services to win2k workstation env, with iis, ftp to home share, Lotus Domino webmail, proxy, little else for 300 users, max 15 concurrent. I plan to reduce this to a 2 server domain on Esmith. But i have 2 questions.  (all clients are win2k) The esmith domain will run inside of our WAN, no need for gateway/firewall type services.

1. Is it easy enough to auto setup ftp access to each users /home Samba share, as we already provide this, and i must replace this service - it would ned to be automatd, so when we delegate user management to helpdeks staff, the ftp access to the samba share is auto created, permissions etc.

2. If i use 2 esmith servers, 1 running as a PDC, with samba for home shares, group policy, ftp, printers, DHCP and the 2nd server running mail and http and possibly authenticated proxy services woul i easily be able to sync the user accounts, as per a win32 PDC/BDC arrangements so authentication for either server will use the same user account? Is there a contrib, or existing feature of esmith to sync these, or is it easy enough to set up and leave working?

The above 2 questions are all that is stopping me buying the licenses or Esmith, consolidating the 5 compaq ml370 into 2 servers, ditching all ouyt windows and Lotus Domino licensing costs, and probably saving us around 30kAUD.

As an aside, anyone ever install esmith on a compaq ML370 or ML350? Its no bother if it wont play nice, i will run esmith in VMWARE on win2k if i have to, but direct install would be prefferably.

Kind regards an thanks

PS what a fantastic, awesome product - almost a win2k killer.

[Pete]

Possibly another configuration option for me is to host all these service on a pair of heavy duty servers, either in cluster or runduncay type modes, has clustering been successfuly implemented, or is it even recommened to suit the needs i have listed above?

[bmann]

First off, there is no reason you need two servers. A high-powered, redundant e-smith setup will get you all the reliability you need (especially for only 300 users). Server-class hardware, RAID, etc.

With proper backups, you can have an e-smith server up and running again in 30min, and that's with a fresh install and restore (perhaps on a server kept as backup, off-site).

Unfortunately, there is no way to sync user databases -- PDC/BDC is not possible with e-smith currently (AFAIK).

You may want to put some notice of this in the "Experienced user" forum, and you may want to post separately about the FTP/user share issue (I have FTP turned off, and just use SMB for internal file shares).

Blasphemy, but you might also want to check out Net Integrator, which is a commercial Linux-based solution.

[Pete]

Thanks - i kinda figured it would easily all live on one box, we have an ML370 866mhz 1GB RAM, Raid5, but my boss will tear this down as a bad idea, as he firmly believes in having a seperate machine for every task (madness), so that if something fails it all doesnt fail blah blah - he doesnt even like using win2k and prefers to use NT for everything...so i need to propose what i think will get through, not necessarily what i think is best - grrrr wankers have politicized my job.

I will look more carefully into either rsync the passwd files or getting ldap to replicate...thanks.